Back from Miami... Watching Weather, Earthquakes, History and Touching Base with BobbiStorm - 1111 Lincoln Road, Florence 2006.. A Look Back and a Look Forward.

I've been following weather only here and there was time permits while on vacation in Miami. I refuse to obsess about the slight possibility of any sort of frozen preceipt in North Carolina until next winter; if we get snow it will surprise me and I'll be silly and over the top excited. Watching models this past winter, after the surprise snow in November, has been like watching Lucy promise not to pull the football away from Charlie Brown and then she does it over and over again.


I'm more than halfway to the Hurricane Season and thinking of posts to write that would offer some historic and educational value here as we march into March of 2019. You can see the signs online that we are more there in our minds than the pages of the calendar are that are stuck on February 2019.

Nothing makes my heart race faster than...

..purple satellite images of the tropics.

https://www.instagram.com/dabuhsurf/

Yes I was hiding from the world in Miami Beach.

Standing on rooftops staring out at the lights below.

Wearing long sleeves because it was cold that night.

High on life and too many Nespressos.

https://1111lincolnrd.com/

My son's best friend's father helped design it.

You've seen it on the credits of Burn Notice.

It's next store and upstairs from Nespresso :)

And yes someone lives on the top of it ...

...it's true. My son explained it to me.

I believed him but here's the link...

There's a tropical palace on top of an iconic parking lot.

They paved paradise and built another paradise.

But from the street level....

...who would know what's on the top of the parking lot?

Miami is like that, always evolving.

Always rediscovering itself.

Always redefining itself.

Magical city indeed.

How it looks from down below.

There are secrets everywhere there.

And in life as well.

They paved paradise indeed...

..and put up a parking lot with a hidden mansion on top!

I'm home, back from my Myami vacation (that's how natives like to say it...though my Grandma Mary used to call it "MY-AM-MAH" with a deep Southern drawl that she called a real "FLAHR-da accent" and yes there was something awesome about my Grandma Mary... no one like her really. I found out on Ancestry that she was actually six years older than she told everyone and I'm not even sure she knew that as there was a lot of fussing with birthdates in her family. Shows you what a cute, short, youthful looking woman can get away with over time.... six years... but it explains some discrepancies in her stories she told often that seemed not to make total sense. For instance she told me once she walked in a parade in "Tampeh" (that's how she called it) with her father when she was little and he held her hand so tightly so she didn't get lost as there were so many people there celebrating the end of the Spanish American War. I asked her if she was sure about that because she told me she was born in 1900 and that's really young for her to be walking in 1898! She thought on it and said maybe it was some other parade but I always wondered on that. There was a rumor going around once she was born in 1898 but even then you can't walk in a parade when you are five or six months old...  But at five or six you would go to a parade with your father. See my point? The devil IS in the details. She was born when her mother was going on 40, my mother was born when she was also older... I had my last child when I was going on 40. Patterns exist in families. I do not lie about my age but I could get away with it if I wanted to...

This is an off the topic post tonight and I'll resume posts regularly soon, but if you haven't noticed there isn't anything tropical going on right now. I was looking back at some old posts from years gone by when I used to sit up obviously at night refusing to go to sleep and apparently writing in my sleep the oddest posts and people read them it seems. Confessions of a storm tracker out of her mind a times. Looking longingly for some wave that would spin and catch the attention of the men at the NHC who might write a real discussion and that would come close enough to flirt with Miami but not do any real damage. That is the dream you know of all Miami kids.... the thills, the flirting and the excitement but no roof tiles should fly off anyone's roof and no papaya trees lost to the storm and only some minor palm trees swaying and work cancelled so you can go to the beach and watch the waves.

2006.... the year Ernesto came flirting (and sent kickass roses I may add to the library) and Florence confounding the NHC as to why it wasn't doing what they thought it should be doing. What is in a name afterall? That name is now retired, gone with the tropical wind and that ship won't be sailing again in the Atlantic Basin.

http://hurricaneharbor.blogspot.com/2006/09/?m=0

What amazes me is that I wrote like that and no I was not high on any substance other than a love of hurricanes and obviously some of my closest friends who also love weather. More diary than blog except for when something was really going on in the weather world. Lots of menus and music and musing on going to Key West which I did regularly back then when I needed a more tropical place than Miami.  Oh what a time it was...

Apparently there was an earthquake in September of 2006 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa (Tam-peh) and it's not that I didn't believe my blog but I Googled it just to be sure. How bout that, talk about a geological event disappearing in the tropical breeze.

Wonder what Dutchsinse would say on that one?

There was Florence in the Atlantic kind of...

...trying to find herself.

Confounding the forecasters.

Not much has changed huh?

Well the name has been retired.

Miami is a unique place.

Diverse and deceptive at times.

Raise the buildings.

Make a parking lot into public space.

And this weekend is the craziest weekend of the year.

The Boat Show meets the Coconut Grove Art Festival.

Miami in February is often an illusion.

And illusions sell.

So do the movies.

And if you are going to film in Miami...

...do it in February.

As for me I'm back in Carolina.

Debating what to do this week...

Wondering on the weekend.

It's the OSCARS in LA.

Far away but maybe I'll wear my Oscar necklace.

It's a real golden copy of an Oscar.

An Oscar charm!

My mother hated it.

She asked me if I had a St. Peter around my neck :(

I showed her it was a mini Oscar.

My ex husband got it for me in a jewelry store in Beverly Hills.

And then the next day they stopped selling them.

Apparently it's against the law to make a graven image of Oscar!

Even in 14K gold.

Beverly Hills was fun.

But it's not as beautiful as Miami Beach or Coral Gables.

Trees are budding in Carolina.

A few even have some flowers showing.

After this week of endless rain....

... maybe more will bud when the sun comes out.

It's quiet in February of 2019.

Looks like there's a party in Rio.

Sometimes I wish I could be as silly as I was in 2006.

I changed jobs that year.

I was probably out of my mind with fear.

I decided to take a job for Touro University.

On Miami Beach... paid to be on Miami Beach.

It changed my world in ways.

Change can be good.

It's good to stay fresh and be inspired.

So yes I went to my Tara.

I'll be back sooner rather than later.

Girls get married.

Babies are born.

Life goes on...

It's good to love where you live.

Nowhere is Key West.

Nowhere is Seattle.

There is a huge world in between.

I hope your world spins on the right axis.

And those you love make you smile and laugh.

And at the end of the day.

You say Amen and let's do it again!

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram

And everywhere else in between.

What's your dream?

What's your fantasy?

What would you like to create?

What a creation....

...